Author: Dan Dickinson

Back to the “things only I care about” category, I just severly tweaked my IIDX Progress page. Changes include the addition of 5th Style NSC songs, grades calculated on the fly (since 5th Style doesn’t give you grades), more progress counting shtuff for me, and best of all, a description of the game so those of you who have no idea what I’m talking about can get at least a basic understanding.

IIDX players may also be interested in the stand alone grade counter I linked to from the progress page, which will quickly calculate a grade for you based on Ex score and total notes.

Most people have never heard of 2K, Advanced Acoustic Armaments, Angels 1-5, Big In Japan, Black Smoke, Brilliant, Custered, Disco 2000, The Justified Ancients of Mu Mu, The JAMs, Kalevala, Lori & The Chamelions, Moody Boys, The One World Orchestra, The Scourge Of The Earth, Solid Gold Chartbusters, Space, The Forever Ancients Liberation Loophole, The Kopyright Liberation Front, The Timelords, or any of the other names Bill Drummond and Jimmy Cauty went by between the late 80’s and the early 90’s – but for some reason, most people have heard of The KLF. Most of the time, for the wrong reasons – an errant glimpse on a “Two Hit Wonders” show on MTVH1, or recollections of 3AM Eternal. Some people respond to the letters “KLF” with the thought “Tammy Wynette” and convulse.

Over 10 years after they forced the music industry to write them off, they still remain an unusual and interesting example of what two guys can do when they set out to absolutely fuck with the status quo.

HEATHER NEWMAN: Recording industry has warning: File-sharers have to face the music

I’m sure by now you’ve heard about the kids that got “busted” by the RIAA for using Kazaa. But this caught my eye:

The damages sought by the suits are astronomical: $150,000 per song, the maximum allowed by law. Multiply that by the 652,000 or so songs the RIAA alleges student Joseph Nievelt offered to other Michigan Tech students on his service, and the scope of the suit is clear.

That total? About $97.8 trillion — yes, trillion with a T — or enough money to buy every CD sold in America last year over again for the next 120,000 years, according to RIAA statistics. And that’s just Nievelt’s case.

Now, at first I thought, 652000 songs by an average of 3 megs a song, that’s just shy of 2 terabytes. What sort of kid has two terabytes?

But then Brett mentioned that it was probably the number of times he sent a file to someone.

So that means that downloading a file over the internet carries a price tag of $150,000. By visitng my web page – which has just a graphic, a javascript include, and the html – that’s $450,000.

Searching Google Images gives you 20 thumbnails back, plus various extra google graphics (we’ll say 4), plus the HTML – why, that’s 3.75 million dollars.

Why didn’t anyone tell me the internet was so expensive?